The
winter months bring with them an alarming set of side effects. For me, I find
winter the loneliest season, despite the holidays, and I’m sure many can
relate. Who doesn’t want a warm body to keep them cozy through the cold season?
This winter, despite a mostly loveless and lust-free year, I ended up dipping back
into the dating pool, likely a hopeless endeavor, to shake the winter blues.
It
had honestly been a while. The last time I had a boyfriend, it was disastrous,
and so I was reluctant. Most of last year ended up getting sucked away in a
vortex of work and travel, and disappeared before I realized it. But nearing
the end, just as the Vancouver rain was hitting its peak, I reactivated my
online dating profile, and before I knew it, the games had begun. Again.
My
first foray back into the world of dating was with a spritely younger guy named
Neil. A 21-year-old UBC student who lived in Ladner, wore a purse, and jizzed
over the thought of Joanna Newsom, he was certainly not my type on paper
whatsoever. I was skeptical, but we met for coffee and ended up talking for
hours. There were certainly some strange social moments, such as when he
slightly freaked out that I had more Tumblr followers than him, but he
reassured himself by realizing his Twitter presence was more prominent than mine
(Ugh).
He
was silly, yet educated, and I was attracted to him despite the fact that his
tiny frame made me feel like a complete beast. We saw a lot of each other quite
fast, with dinners and live bands filling my already hectic schedule. They say
you make time for what matters to you, and this felt right to me. On our third
date, we ended up seeing a DJ at the Electric Owl, where I met his two brothers
and their significant others. In most circumstances, this would have easily
been filed under “way too soon”, but it felt mature and accomplished, and I
liked that we seemed to be on the same wavelength.
We
saw a lot of each other over that month. The night of our last ‘date’ felt a
bit strange. We ended up at a party with a bunch of his friends. The group of
younger gay guys, whom, I had been notified, had all dated or slept with each
other, were actually a lot nicer than Neil had suggested. “They’re not really
my friends,” he said. “It’s just a keeping up appearances thing.”
Despite
obnoxious conversation about how “Katy Perry really can sing” and watching the room
full of petite men call each other fat, I had a good time, and felt oddly
satisfied when Neil introduced me as his “boyfriend”, despite never talking
about it beforehand and only dating for a month. It was nice to meet a love
interest’s friends. Over the past few years, anyone I’d seen had been such a
brief encounter that it had never gotten to that point. He had already met everyone
in my social circle, and taken up a near-obsessive attachment to my best friend
Shannon, which we later realized was possibly due to her Internet infamy on
Reddit earlier in the year. He’d been to my house to decorate for Christmas,
with my mother and sister both fawning over him, and he’d been totally cool
with it.
We
left the party to head to his house in Ladner for the rest of the evening, and
ended waiting at the River Rock Casino for 90 minutes. I ended up getting into
terrified visitor/protective boyfriend mode on the bus, not realizing Ladner
was a bit of a ghetto, and the bus riders sitting behind us had visible guns in
their possession and were discussing blowing each other’s brains out mid-route.
In the midst of it, Neil’s bag opened, and his notebook fell out. I picked it
up off the bus floor, and he quickly snatched it out of my hand with fury. I
wondered if the gangsters behind us were making him nervous, but this type of
behaviour was quite unlike him.
We
got to his house, and went to bed around two. Around four, I woke up to him
getting out of bed and putting his clothes on. “Where are you going?” I asked.
He seemed panicked, distant, and I could tell he was being shifty. He told me
he thought he may have mistaken his work schedule and was going to drive to his
Starbucks to see if he was opening. I lay in his bed, feeling something really
uneven in my heart, and, despite knowing better, I went into his bag and pulled
out his notebook.
I
scanned through to the last page he had written on, on which I found the words,
“I had drinks with two friends today. I tried, but I just couldn’t tell them I
have a boyfriend. Something feels wrong.”
The
friends he had introduced me to were a lark, and the friends he mentioned in
this book were his besties. This was very bad. I was far from home, lying by
myself in the bed of someone younger than me; someone who I cared about a lot
more than he cared about me.
I
tried to get back to sleep, and he returned an hour later, crawled into bed
without waking or touching me. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night, and in the
morning when he drove me to the skytrain, I could sense that he knew something
had changed. He hugged and kissed me goodbye, and I felt dirty even doing so,
not even fully realizing what the problem of the situation was. I had bought us
tickets for a play which was two nights later, and he ended up bailing via
text, which ended up us mutually ending the entire thing, also via text.
Pathetic.
“Fuck
that shit,” Shannon said. “No more younger guys. You need a nice older man,
someone who has necessary gratitude.”
I
had to agree. It wasn’t really Neil’s fault. I was different at 21, and the 20s
are a huge learning time for what you want, and what does and doesn’t work. I
was actually fine with the split up until I ran into a mutual friend who
greeted me with a bleak, drawn-out, “So … how are you?” I was legitimately
fine, and questioned his tone.
“Oh,
I ran into Neil. He told me what happened. I’m so sorry.”
It
turned out Neil had told our friend that he “had to break up with me” because I
had come on way too strong. Really? Really. He, who threw “boyfriend” around
early, and without discussion. He, who insisted on seeing each other a minimum
of four nights a week. He, who couldn’t go a few hours without texting or
talking. “Figures,” Shannon said. “21, man. You’re too good for this shit.”
The
thing was, I knew it just as much as her; not that it doesn’t feel good to have
your best friend go to bat for you.
Besides,
we were off to San Francisco, the gay mecca of Earth, in just a week. If
previous travel experiences with Shannon stood for anything, I was about to get
up to some trouble. Sexy trouble.
JJ
Brewis is quite possibly the keenest member of our editorial staff. He has been
writing columns on various topics for the Courier for three years, and is now
revisiting his most successful theme: relationships.
//JJ Brewis, columnist
//Graphics by Lydia Fu
//JJ Brewis, columnist
//Graphics by Lydia Fu
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